The Heart of the Guardian
by Cordelia Atreides
Summary: In the aftermath of her battle with Malak, Revan realizes that she has one more secret that her crew ought to know.
_Manaan_. The word was a cool, round stone on her tongue. Her gaze rested on the horizon, where the neverending sea met a sky of equal parts blue and clouds. _Even the weather won't take sides_ , she thought. Not that it was unpleasant. The air was cool, but warmed by the tingling sweetness of kolto. The sea's rumble eliminated silence, but dampened raised voices. And there was an odd thrill that came with seeing Sith and Republic soldiers walking past one another, shoulders rigid and jaws tight, each pretending that their sworn enemy was just part of the sleek and spotless cityscape.

But was she thrilled by the impression of peace, or by the knowledge that it was a dam about to burst?

There was something she had to do here. She couldn't remember what it was, but her stomach fluttered with excitement and something else. Shame? She turned away from the ocean—or tried to. She couldn't move. She pushed harder and was only met with stiffer resistance. Fear bloomed in her chest, transforming into a prickling sensation that poured through her limbs and turned her fingers into rods of ice. The smell of kolto, subtle a moment earlier, flooded her nose and throat. She gagged. The memory of what she needed to do came back in a flash of electricity, and the blue expanse dimmed into blackness.

"It's ok. Please, be ok," said a voice.

She became aware that her head was resting on something lumpy. Her eyelids were the first things that she regained control of. She pushed them upwards and found herself staring into a different blue vista: Mission's face. Glancing around, she realized that she was nowhere near Manaan; she was lying on a bunk in the dimly lit crew quarters of the Ebon Hawk. The familiar buzzes and clanks thrumming through the walls told her that the ship was in flight.

"Mshunn," was all she could push out through her contorted mouth. "Shummm," she added, inexplicably.

"You're back!" Mission put a hand against Revan's cheek. Revan flinched; a Twi'lek's touch would be warm to any human, but on Revan's icy skin it was a torch.

"Sorry." Mission's hand retreated and she pursed her lips. Revan felt a sudden wave of affection for the girl; the wide, dark eyes in the narrow face of pearlescent blue, framed by the graceful drape of head-tails.

"D—don't be sorry," Revan managed to say. "Thank you."

Mission shook her head. "Carth is the one to thank. He treated your injuries. The rest of us have just been taking turns watching. Whatever Malak did to you during that fight, it took a lot out of you."

Revan glanced down at herself. She was mostly covered with a rough blanket, but the parts of her body that she could see were crisscrossed with bandages. Questions stampeded toward her from a distance.

"The others—"

"Are all in one piece."

Revan frowned. "And Bastila?"

"She's—we're—keeping her in the cargo hold. Jolee and Canderous have an eye on her." Mission paused, looking to Revan as if for approval.

Revan's shoulders tensed, and she carefully studied the ceiling panels to block the memory of Bastila's face: pale cheeks, flaming eyes, expressionless mouth. It occurred to Revan that whatever wounds were under her own patchwork of bandages would be the simpler ones to heal.

Mission glanced at the doorway and then leaned closer to Revan. "How does it happen?" Her voice sunk into a whisper with a glint of excitement hidden inside. "How does someone wake up one day and decide that they're going to change everything they believe in? And then change _again_? I mean, not you personally, but the Jedi in general."

Revan was unsure of whether her tongue would cooperate, but she had to try. It was a question she needed to answer, for herself as much as for Mission. If Bastila's life was an existence in the light interrupted by a period in the dark, could her own life be a stretch of darkness with only a glimmer of light? And who could say whether Bastila was truly repentant? She couldn't speak for the other Jedi, only for herself.

"Mission," she began slowly, "I can't say that I was never tempted by the dark side. There were times when I wanted more strength, more control. More credits, even." Mission nodded, likely remembering the laborious and contentious process of selling off extra equipment for credits, most of which were then spent on medpacs. "The dark side would have made those things easier. To be truthful, it _did_ make those things easier, those times that I slipped away from the Ebon Hawk in secret." Mission's head jerked back, but she said nothing.

"But do you remember what you said when you found out about my past?" Revan pressed on, her voice becoming steadier. "That you were loyal to who I am, not to what I had been before? More than anything — more than the Republic or the Jedi Code, or even stopping the Sith — those are the things that you remember when you're given the choice. There's someone out there who trusts you and has put their heart in your hands. Even if all the galaxy weighs against that, you'll see which is greater." _But which was greater for Bastila?_ asked a voice in her mind.

A soft sigh came from the doorway.

"You!" Mission sprang to her feet.

Carth emerged from the shadows, both hands held up. "I just wanted to see how she was doing. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"So you just stood there eaves-dropping. Smart move, flyboy." Mission stuck out her violet tongue.

It occurred to Revan that Carth had never looked so old. Or had he been old the whole time? She tried to recall how many gray hairs had been intermingled with the brown when their journey began. Lines were engraved on his forehead, and what had once been dusky stubble had grown into a full beard. Her right index finger stretched towards him, seemingly of its own volition. Before it could do anything further, he was crouching beside the bed with his hand over hers, carefully avoiding the bandaged areas. Mission, uncharacteristically, made no comment and stood to leave.

"No. Stay," Revan said. "If you can."

Carth looked from Revan to Mission, seemingly unsure about what he could say to either of them. He said nothing, which Revan thought showed a remarkable burgeoning wisdom. Mission sat back down.

"Before I woke just now, I was dreaming about the time when we were on Manaan," Revan said. "Do you remember how the Sith and the Republic soldiers were so afraid to lay a finger on each other?"

Carth and Mission nodded, each appearing perplexed at the choice of conversation topic.

"Would it surprise you to learn that in the same city, a secret society was hiring bounty hunters to assassinate politically inconvenient targets?"

"Not really," said Carth with ease. "There were a lot of things lurking under the surface of that place, as we saw."

"Would it surprise you that one of the assassins was me?"

They both blinked.

"Sometimes bounties are put on the heads of criminals who can't be brought to justice any other way," said Carth, but his voice had acquired the familiar tautness of distrust.

"The man I agreed to assassinate was a terrorist by any definition. But he had already been captured, Carth. He was an unarmed prisoner in the Republic enclave. I made it look like his death — his electrocution — was an accident. If any Republic soldiers had suspicions about what happened, they looked the other way."

Mission shook her head. "But so much has happened since we were on Manaan. Why are you telling us now?"

"I'm trying to answer the question you asked me. I didn't wake up deciding that I wanted to kill a defenseless stranger. I killed him because I thought it would help the greater good. I killed him because I wanted the reward. I justified it to myself, told myself that he deserved to die, that he _would_ die no matter what I did, and that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Carth, didn't you ever wonder where the credits came from when we bought all those blaster guns and lightsaber crystals?"

Mission looked at Carth, whose face was a mask.

"I guess there was too much happening for me to think of that, Revan." His voice was quiet but she flinched when he said her name. He avoided using it, but seemed equally unwilling to continue using her alias.

Here were the two people that had been with her the longest. Their homes had been shattered and their families had been warped, but they'd allowed her to fill the voids that had been left behind. But now she had torn those wounds open again. What could she do, other than lie there hating herself for what she'd done, and hating herself more for confessing it?

"Revan," he said again. She squeezed her eyelids shut, and was annoyed to find moisture burning underneath them. "I've been too scared to call you that," he went on. He sounded soothing, musing, distant. "Too afraid that it would wake something monstrous inside of you."

She opened her eyes. His image swam in front of her. "I can wake it on my own."

"You can," said Carth, "but that's true for all of us. I know it woke in me when we fought Saul. When he was lying there defeated, I wanted to kill him as painfully as possible. I wanted to make him pay for everything he'd done to my family and my planet. And to us. But you stopped me."

"What does that matter, if I can't follow my own advice?"

Carth shook his head. "Whether or not it mattered to you, it mattered a lot to me. When you're fighting against the dark side, it's hard not to be touched by it. It touched both of us. I think the difference is that I had someone there to remind me of what I was fighting _for_." The rough warmth of his hand pressed against her more tightly.

"You're just like the rest of us, Rev," said Mission. "Well, not _just_ like us, because of the lightsaber and all that. But you're not a droid who's controlled by the Jedi code. You're not controlled by anybody. You're always going to make your own choices. Maybe you won't always be proud of them, but that doesn't mean you won't have other choices to make, or that we won't be there to help you. Unless you do something _really_ bad. Like asking Canderous to tell another war story."

Revan snorted, which made her lungs hurt. Her mind had, at last, settled on a course of action. Her anxiety towards it was as strong as her conviction. "Will you take me to Bastila?"

Carth hesitated. "Right now? You're in pretty bad shape. She's not going anywhere."

"But she needs to know that she's not alone. She needs that as much as I do." _More_ _than I do_.

Carth wisely refrained from arguing. Mission pulled away the blanket, and Carth eased his arms under Revan's back and knees. She swayed with his stride as he carried her through the hallways, and she thought of Manaan once again. The ocean was as vast as love and as deep as regret, and whatever lay beyond its horizon was as unknowable as the future that lay before her. But for now, she had the people around her, and for them—for each of them—she would fight anything. Even herself.


End file.
